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Topic: Facets [2008-02-25] (Read 282966 times) previous topic - next topic
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Facets [2008-02-25]

Facets is a flexible media library viewer for foobar2000, based on linked lists.

It's a UI Element to be added to the new Default User Interface 0.9.5.

2011: A new version has been released. Please continue in the new discussion thread.

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #1 –
After the big disappointment of foo_browser i tried to forget that this type of library viewer is in fact my favorite. I am so eager to test it in the next hours.

So much thanks, Frank!

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #2 –
Another example of Facets in use right here:


[a href="http://foobar2000.org/releasenotes-095/images/default_user_interface7.png" target="_blank"]  Great job, Frank!

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #3 –
This is sooo much faster and cleaner than foo_browser. Thank you so much! I was just looking at the roadmap page on your site, though, and I was wondering why you listed certain features under "not going to be implemented." Some of these are things that I would love to have and have been using in foo_browser fo a while. For example:

-Options to hide the summary item, to hide scrollbars or column headers, to change the item height, or to disable alternate row colors.
-Dynamic Facet playlist name based on title formatting.

Is there a technical reason why these will never happen, or do you just not find them to be useful features?

I'd also like to request the option to disable the cascading selection behavior (so that the facets are always completely populated except when using a search filter). Last, could you maybe put a small "Clear" button next to the search box to reset the search and facets.

Sorry for bitching, I'm just excited about all the new interface stuff and its put lots of ideas in my head.

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #4 –
Quote
(...) I was wondering why you listed certain features under "not going to be implemented."

I aim to conform to the concept of the Default User Interface, which:
Quote
(...) puts a focus on instant usability and easy configuration; it deliberately does not offer total visual customization (...)

Maybe as an additional note, this component has been in development and active internal testing for almost a year, and is thus considered as finished    for the most part. You can rest assured that I have thoroughly read the forum during this time and considered a huge number of possible implementations and options, as proven by the long feature list, but please understand that this process also includes to reject several features. Otherwise a component ends up with no clear concept and chaos, and is likely to be complicated to use and will eventually be abandoned, as seen in popular examples.

Quote
I'd also like to request the option to disable the cascading selection behavior (so that the facets are always completely populated except when using a search filter).

You can use multiple Facets UI Elements containing only one single Facet for this purpose.

Just activate the Layout Editing Mode (menu View, Layout), and right-click on the unnecessary Facet views to remove them, as seen in this screenshot.

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #5 –
Quote from: Frank Bicking on
You can use multiple Facets UI Elements containing only one single Facet for this purpose.
Good idea, thanks. A shame about those other features, but I have a feeling this interface refresh is gonna attract some new developers and lots of new components will come to fill in the gaps.

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #6 –
I did some testing and i am really impressed: you have not forgotten nothing!

In the next days i will try to phrase two bigger suggestions/requests - so far i have only two questions:

1. What does "prevent playlist update" in the Layout Editing Mode make?
2.  Why doesn't the facet plugin doesn't handle empty fields like Album List so that it shows an "?" if a special tag doesn't exist. I even tried titleformating without success: $if2(%date%,<no date>).  It is very irritating not to have access to such items

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #7 –
Quote from: q-stankovic on
What does "prevent playlist update" in the Layout Editing Mode make?

It disables sending the current selection to the playlist, overriding the "Selection change" setting at the preferences.

If you for example had three Facets with genre, artist, and album, and enabled this option for the genre Facet, selecting a genre would cause the artist and album Facets to be updated, but not the playlist. Only a selection change in the artist or album Facet would cause the current selection to be sent to the playlist.

If you can think of a better status bar description for this menu item, please let me know.

Quote
Why doesn't the facet plugin doesn't handle empty fields like Album List so that it shows an "?" if a special tag doesn't exist.

Thank you for reporting this. I have reuploaded the component to fix this problem.

A new FAQ entry explains the different column patterns to deal with missing tags.

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #8 –
foo_browser done right...  now I can finally look through my 60,000 plus collection at lightning speed. I love the option to browse via folder, but this doesnt actually use real time folders it only uses the folder media library has in its current list... not sure if that makes it slow down if it uses real folders but either way I love it...

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #9 –
As everyone has said this component is almost perfect, the only thing I can see missing is some kind of clear button on the search bar so that one doesn't need to delete the whole string before going back to the whole playlist.

Your roadmap states
Quote
Planned features
* Display album art or folder icons next to each item.


I don't know why people would need folder icons and there is already a component that allows browsing the library using albumart. Just stating this cause I really agree with the new idea of keeping everything simple.

Thanks for the component!
 

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #10 –
Frank, this component ist absolutely brilliant.

There is only one thing i wish: The possibility to exclude certain filetypes, like the option under preferences > general.

Explanation:
Quote from: webflo on
is there any possibility to load only the cue-file and not the real big mp3 file. So there is anytime in my playlist the splitted tracks and after these tracks is the real mp3 file.

Quote from: Synthetic Soul on
The best resolve I've seen for this is to rename the mp3 from <name>.mp3 to <name>.cue.mp3 and then exclude .cue.mp3 files in preferences.


Thanks for this great component


//edit: seems that i had tomatoes on my eyes:

Quote from: Bimbo Frogger on
Just noticed that there is another playce for excluding filetypes. Under Preferences > Media Library. Now it works systemwide. Must be blind. Never saw it before 

Now it's perfect

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #11 –
Hello Frank,
your component is one of the greatest I've ever seen (so useful, so fast, so easy and so configurable).
But I noticed one bug. My library is currently very small (it's a new small aac one I've just start building) so it was easy for me to see that a complete entry was missing :



I've tried to scan, rescan and rerescan the library; I've manually add the folder into a playlist, I've add the separate subfolder entry into the database:



foobar2000 was restarted several times, but nothing works. Audio filenames have aren't unusual.
Any idea?

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #12 –
Could it be that you have selected "All" in the genre facet, while the affected files have no genre tag?

If you use [%genre%] (with brackets), the summary item excludes tracks without a genre.

In contrast, if no item is selected in the genre facet, the next facet would also display tracks without genres.

Quote from: alphaex32 on
Last, could you maybe put a small "Clear" button next to the search box to reset the search and facets.
Quote from: aliumalik on
As everyone has said this component is almost perfect, the only thing I can see missing is some kind of clear button on the search bar so that one doesn't need to delete the whole string before going back to the whole playlist.

Thanks, that's a good idea. Added to my planned features list.

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #13 –
Quote from: Frank Bicking on
Could it be that you have selected "All" in the genre Facet, while the affected files have no genre tag?

If you use [%genre%] (with brackets), the summary item excludes tracks without a genre.


 
That's it! I forgot to fill genre for this box set. Thank you very much

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #14 –
Would it be possible to add mouseover activation? What I mean is to be able to scroll the facet under the mouse pointer, without clicking into it.

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #15 –
Thanks Frank .... awesome component

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #16 –
This plugin seems great so far! Keep up the good work!
One feature request: possibility to have multiple rows instead of multiple columns

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #17 –
Quote from: LordWarlock on
Would it be possible to add mouseover activation? What I mean is to be able to scroll the facet under the mouse pointer, without clicking into it.

While I like the idea as well, there are two problems:

1. It violates Windows standards.
2. Facets would be the only UI Element to behave like this.

I'll have to think about this before I can give you a definite answer.
Meanwhile, you can use the middle button to scroll. If it's not assigned to any action, that is.

Quote from: ilpippo on
One feature request: possibility to have multiple rows instead of multiple columns

There will be multiple rows per item as soon as I add album art support.

(No need to worry for existing users, there will be two separate views.)

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #18 –
Hi Frank, This is one great panel that helped me get iTunes like interface quite easily and much faster too! Thanks for absolute brilliant panel.

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #19 –
Quote from: Frank Bicking on
Quote from: LordWarlock on
Would it be possible to add mouseover activation? What I mean is to be able to scroll the facet under the mouse pointer, without clicking into it.
While I like the idea as well, there are two problems:

1. It violates Windows standards.
2. Facets would be the only UI Element to behave like this.

I'll have to think about this before I can give you a definite answer.
Meanwhile, you can use the middle button to scroll. If it's not assigned to any action, that is.
I think that's what was requested .... just move your mouse and use the scroll button to ... scroll.
The volume control already behaves like this.

Edit: BTW .... I have discovered a small annoyance .... the results in the facet playlist seems to be sorted by file path ... which may be a different order from the facets. Is there a way to control the sort order in the playlist view? Thanks.(Saw ... Preferences --> General)
Edit2: There is still a small discrepancy with the ' character which does not get sorted the same way between the facet and the playlist.

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #20 –
There's a privacy issue with Facets:

When exporting a foobar2000 theme that contains a Facets element then the quick search history is saved in the theme file.

So either this should be purged when exporting the theme, or it should be made possible to manually purge the history (via a button in the preferences and by pressing CTRL-DEL when text cursor is in search field).

About the mouseover scroll:

I like that, too. Opera does this and I have gotten used to it to an extent that I have thought about proposing it for foobar2000, too.

But yes, ideally it should work application wide, means also for the playlists, properties elements, and so on... otherwise it can bring confusion to the workflow. So maybe it's an optional feature to be considered for the core.

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #21 –
The former is not an option, since the UI Element cannot tell where its settings are exported to.

You can manually purge the history:
Quote
Q: How do I clear the search history or remove an item?
A: Right-click on the dropdown button and choose "Clear History" or "Remove This History Item".

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #22 –
Ah, thanks. All's fine.

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #23 –
Oh, I've encountered a crash when changing one Facet from Folder view to Album Artist view. There are 775 folders.


Thanks for your report. I have saved the crash logs and sent you a PM about how to proceed.

Please use PMs or IRC for future crash reports, to prevent the thread from becoming unnecessarily cluttered.


Edit: The issue has been fixed. Thanks again.

Facets [2008-02-25]

Reply #24 –


Steps to reproduce:
1. fill a facet with many entries with this little triangle on the right side
2. adjust the heigth of the facet so, that the scrollbar disappears
3. minimize the height slowly until the scrollbar appears
4. minimize a further until only the up most pixel of a triangle is visible
5. use the scrollbar
-> the result is as above

I guess this always happens, when the height of the inner part of the facet is not a multiple of the height of a single entry. The occurrence of this glitch is not related to the windows theme and it does not depend on the selected font. The system is XP Pro SP2